


A Spirit Renewed

by adoxyinherear



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Diary/Journal, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-06-20 20:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15542151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoxyinherear/pseuds/adoxyinherear
Summary: The Inquisition is wanted again – maybe only to be brought near enough to be dismantled or subdued, but still.We are wanted.And I am writing with a renewed spirit.--Sequel toPaper and Ink, beginning at the start of Trespasser. Wallowing in Solavellan hell and introspection.





	1. A Spirit Renewed

Within a season of our victory, many of our forces requested leave with their families. Only some returned.

A few weeks following the soldiers’ departure, the diplomats, too, sought other courts to feed their hunger for gossip and intrigue.

Josephine, within a few months, to Antiva. Cassandra, to the Chantry and her dreamed-of reforms. The Chargers, Varric, Dorian, Sera, Vivienne, all departed over the course of a year to the worlds they’d built elsewhere. A lean and lonely winter robbed us of the weight a good harvest had granted, and all those who’d lingered in hope but whose hearts belonged elsewhere fled, too.

But my heart belongs in Skyhold.

So I’d stayed.

Leliana and Cole were the only ones who seemed to have nowhere else to be, having burned all bridges and having none to begin with, respectively.

Now the courtyard is busy for the first time in more than a year, nearly two, the horses daily exercised, scouts coming and going, news traded over newly-scrubbed tables in the tavern. Maryden isn’t only singing to herself. The Inquisition is wanted again – maybe only to be brought near enough to be dismantled or subdued, but still.

We are wanted.

And I am writing with a renewed spirit.

\--

Josephine was the first to appear. We could hardly have been received in Halamshiral without her. A box of fresh candles and another of parchment waited for her on her desk, and there was no escaping her embrace of thanks. Truly, I was grateful for it. With the exception of my horse, the last living touch I’d felt was a chaste shaking of Cullen’s hand when he returned from a long overdue visit to his sister, more than six months ago.

Cassandra – I cannot think of her as Divine Victoria, and at least here I don’t have to – had sent a messenger, and we gathered around the war table again as though no time at all had passed. Cullen argued for a larger armed force than Josephine deemed appropriate, and Leliana for a stronger presence of her spies in my retinue. I listened, but my eyes returned again and again to a streak of dust one of the servants had missed near a corner of the map, evidence of long neglect.

“Charter is as good as having five of your people with me,” I insisted to Leliana before turning my distracted gaze on Cullen. “And we’ll travel as far as Lydes with the force you think necessary, but Josephine knows better than both of us the number that would be welcome at the palace. I defer to her judgment.”

It felt good, to give orders. But I’m thinking on it now and what I missed wasn’t leading, not really.

It was talking and having someone listen.

\--

We’re leaving tomorrow and I am sitting up too late in the library in what will always be Dorian’s chair, just able to see the shape of one of Solas’ enigmatic figures in the rotunda below. I have my writing and several books open on the table and my lap, one of Varric’s and another on the Fade, corners worn from turning.

I am thinking about Solas.

I didn’t try to enter the Fade for months after he left, and it was months more before I admitted that all of my capacity for traveling, for seeing, had been because he was with me.

I tried to find the trainer who’d come to Skyhold in the months following Corypheus’ retreat; I’d hoped that my mind would be more receptive to her teachings with less to trouble it. But she’d disappeared, almost as efficiently as Solas had. I was left only with the contents of his desk, Vivienne’s useless acquisitions – too narrow, too academic – and the archaic tomes that Dorian had acquired during his tenure as Skyhold’s eccentric book collector.

What Scout Harding could not deliver in the flesh she endeavored to provide through rumor, conjecture, stories. There were none among the People with Solas’ gifts for traveling the Fade, but there were tales of others, ancient others, dreamers with second lives lived in sleeping. I learned what I could from strangers, second and third and fourth-hand accounts, from my brief interactions with the spirit Telana, in the Frostback Basin. I am no closer to understanding him.

But I have regained a modicum of the control, the capacity to experience the Fade, he once shared.

It is something.

It is enough.

\--

“It’s empty, like a bowl scraped clean, a forgotten nest, warm once but cold now. It’s not meant to be empty. It likes to be _full_.”

Cole’s words reached me as we rode away from Skyhold. I hear them still, and behind my eyelids persists my last sight of the ramparts shrouded in low clouds.

“It’s been practically empty for months now,” I told him, but he shook his head.

“They’ll forget, they’re forgetting already. Stones worn underfoot, trampled grass, the smell of beer and baking bread and braided hair tumbling down,” he trailed off, eyes glazed and distant, as Maryden plucked her lute astride her horse behind us. I felt like together they struck a chord in me: the slosh of a full tankard passed from Bull’s hand to mine, slick footing in the practice yard with Cassandra after a hard rain, the feel of Solas’ hands in my hair. I would see them again soon.

I would see some of them again soon.

“I won’t forget,” I whispered.


	2. The Dread Wolf Guards You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being here surrounded by old friends is making me feel his departure fresh again. I am like an old hunter, complaining of a wound earned during my first season. It pains me when I least expect it, an ache sharpened by time and knowledge rather than dulled by it.
> 
> \--
> 
> Lavellen arrives at the Exalted Council and travels through the Eluvian to the elven ruins.

My dress uniform had to be taken in to account for the weight I’ve lost. It is as uncomfortable as ever, though I’ve never been happier to wear it.

Unable to sleep tonight in advance of the council tomorrow, I placed the key to Kirkwall on my chest, a cool weight on my sternum, and passed Dorian’s messaging crystal back and forth between my wind-chapped fingers. I’d asked him over drinks if our conversations would be private.

“If this is a question of security, I can assure you the enchantment is sound,” he’d replied, his smirk so dear I could’ve kissed him, though I knew neither of us would enjoy it.

“I have no state secrets to betray,” I clarified. “Only my own paranoia.”

“You were the object of extreme fascination for a darkspawn magister,” Dorian cried. “That warrants some paranoia.”

“You give my imagination too much credit.”

“And you fail to credit it enough,” he continued. His next words were softer, approaching the gentle confidences we’d shared in the library. “What troubles you?”

I couldn’t explain it to him, not exactly. Even now I am still trying to make sense of it for myself.

“I know why the Inquisition has been summoned. They mean to end us,” I replied. “But this feels like the beginning of something to me, rather than an ending. Can you feel it?”

_The veil is thin here. Can you feel it?_

I shuddered at the memory, then and again now, at Solas’ words echoed inadvertently on my own tongue.

Dorian laughed and conceded my foolishness, indulged in Sera’s jabs at my vague and “elfy” ruminations. She’d balanced a variety of increasingly small fruits on the brow of Bull’s dragon skull and proceeded to expertly pierce them with an arrow at greater and greater distances – and states of drunkenness. Varric began taking wagers and Cole developed an odd sympathy for what had once been a proud and living beast and was now merely an accessory to a party trick. It was all so familiar. And so good.

But missing something.

Solas' light, musical chuckle. His penetrating gaze. The way he lingered on the edges even after he was, for me, the center of everything.

Being here surrounded by old friends is making me feel his departure fresh again. I am like an old hunter, complaining of a wound earned during my first season. It pains me when I least expect it, an ache sharpened by time and knowledge rather than dulled by it.

I haven’t spoken about Solas with anyone in ages, but I haven’t forgotten. I don’t think I _can_ forget.

And I won’t wonder, even here, if he has.

\--

An Eluvian.

Here.

I’ve begged Cassandra’s aid and found my armor polished, as though someone knew that I might need it.

\--

I can still smell the smoke and the herbed grass, the blood and the ancient dust stirred by our boots in the crypts beneath the sanctuary. Fen’Harel’s sanctuary.

_Rest, knowing the Dread Wolf guards you and his people guard this valley._

After Solas’ many lessons I am surprised that I can still be shocked by the ignorance of the Dalish, but I cannot deny the evidence of my eyes. We positioned the Dread Wolf’s likeness around our camps to keep others _out_ , not to protect ourselves but to warn away the enemy. What I saw, what I read – I have been in many ruins, with Solas before we defeated Corypheus and after, alone. None felt so potent as these, their mysteries intact.

I know that we must pursue the Qunari, that they are an unpredictable enemy for all their order. Our time is limited but my mind is steeped in the past.

After we briefed Cullen and Josephine and Leliana, after we secured the Eluvian and after everyone but me, it seemed, was sleeping, I returned to the elven ruins. I picked my way alone through the rubble, hovered a hand over the murals within the main structure. I didn’t dare touch them lest I spoil them, but my eyes were hungry.

The ancient elves knelt before Fen’Harel and he removed their vallaslin. Had Solas witnessed this in the Fade? Is that how he knew how to perform the spell, to free me?

I did not think it was freedom then, but I have grown used to my bare face. At least, I do not find many reasons to look at it, anymore. I am comforted to know that I share something with these ancient elves, that we are rebels, in our own way, determined to find our _own_ way.

Hours I spent with my back against the base of the statue of Fen’Harel, staring at the mural, staring at nothing. It was perhaps an hour before dawn when I wandered out of the ruin into the grass, circling the island and imagining the lives of those who had once lived here, had fought to live here. Only when I saw their forms materialize, when the stones arranged themselves in shining order, when trees disappeared and others sprouted taller and broader and bolder in stature did I realize that I wasn’t walking, but dreaming.

Elves in simple but inexpressibly elegant tunics and leggings lounged in the grass, fished, read, listened to and looked on one another in friendship. I held perfectly still. They could not see me but I had learned that my travels in the Fade were as tenuous as if I balanced on a spider’s thread. Too much weight, too heavy a breath or even a thought and I would awaken, the Fade’s reflection lost.

It was as though I were underwater; I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I did see when those nearest to me started to their feet, not in alarm, but in anticipation. A figure approached, dark-robed and hooded with a bone-white face, featureless in the distance. As it drew closer their smiles brightened and the figure raised a hand in greeting. I saw then that it wasn’t a hood they wore, but the grimacing face of a wolf.

I woke with a gasp, the dream lost to my hammering heart and clenching hands. My eyes, sleep-gummed, muddied the mural before me so that the figures there, too, seemed to move. I hastened to my feet and back across the bridge, eager to be abed before I was missed.

I have never dreamt of a god before. I wonder, do they know when we do?


	3. A Limited Gift to See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel the energy building, a warmth not unlike the heat transferred from a kettle warmed over the fire - or a hand seeking mine, hot from sleep. Solas used to study the anchor, his fingers at once cautious and too familiar. There were times that it would ignite under his touch and he’d trail from palm to wrist, to shoulder and collarbone and breast. His lips would take up the work and I’d lay there, senseless, bathed in the light of his love - what I’d believed was love - and the glow from the mark.
> 
> \--
> 
> Lavellan muses on the anchor, dwarves, the Deep Roads, and stolen moments with Solas years before. Also, Bull and Dorian being briefly adorable. Adorabull? That should be a thing.

The new energy that builds in the anchor worries everyone but me.

What they don’t know is that I’ve grown used to it, the unstable buzz, the light, the heat. Perhaps they think it’s been quiet since the final closing of the Breach. They have no need of it anymore and neither do I, but its power lingers: a reminder that I have a debt unpaid, that I have only borrowed an unknown and unknowable force. Someday, payment will be collected.

Or I will.

Before Morrigan left Skyhold I asked her to consult with the voices from the Well, to learn from them of the orb and the power it had imparted to me. Despite his lamentations, Solas had taken the broken pieces, so I could not even give it to the witch for study.

“It is a symbol,” she answered after a thoughtful moment, her countenance taking on the distant look of listening as she turned her attention inwards. “But it is also a tool to contain, to amplify, to augment. Magic, of course, but of a particular temper. Or an individual, perhaps?”

She’d been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to offer more. After learning what she had about Mythal and the Well, Morrigan was more dubious of the gifts it had imparted.

With Corypheus defeated and Solas gone, there had been no one but Dagna to show any particular interest in the anchor. Given her hands were generally occupied with Sera, she'd had little time for experiments even if I'd been possessed of a desire to be experimented on. So, I'd gone on as I had begun. I sought out rifts and closed them. I noted the anchor’s response to certain stimuli. But mostly, I didn’t think about it. It was a part of me.

But now.

I feel the energy building, a warmth not unlike the heat transferred from a kettle warmed over the fire - or a hand seeking mine, hot from sleep. Solas used to study the anchor, his fingers at once cautious and too familiar. There were times that it would ignite under his touch and he’d trail from palm to wrist, to shoulder and collarbone and breast. His lips would take up the work and I’d lay there, senseless, bathed in the light of his love - _what I’d believed was love_ \- and the glow from the mark.

Josephine will want to be briefed before attending to the council alone - again. I know she recognizes that we must pursue the Qunari, but despite being a diplomat, she does not enjoy duplicity. A reshaping of the truth, certainly, or leading her listeners on with a line of tangentially related logic, charming them, telling them what they need to hear when it is near enough to what she needs them to do, all of this is her purview. But we are asking her to lie and she doesn't like it. I don't, either, but there's nothing else to be done.

We’ve removed the Eluvian to a secure location and that must be my destination until we have the answers we seek, or the Qunari threat is eliminated.  

\--

Sera’s distaste for our mode of travel is rivaled only by Bull's.

“Mirrors,” he grumbled. “What do your people have against roads?”

“ _My_ people make great use of roads,” I countered. “We’ve even been know to improvise our own, where the terrain is friendly.”

“It _is_ very dramatic,” Dorian mused, smirking at Bull. “Symbolic, even, to confront yourself each time you depart.”

“Or just make sure your hair looks good before you leave,” Bull teased.

“Why not both?”

I’d smiled at their exchange, noting but not commenting on Bull’s quick, careful gesture, drawing a curl down Dorian’s brow. He’d smiled at his reflection before stepping through, and didn’t brush it back.

\--

I returned to the ruins again last night.

Leliana knows, but she knows everything. Provided she doesn’t bar my entry or change the guard, I am content to let her assume whatever she wishes. Why shouldn’t I be curious about an ancient place of my people, ages hidden and unspoiled? I may no longer wear my vallaslin or sleep under the stars, but I am still Dalish. It still matters to me, who we were.

And because of Solas, or perhaps in spite of him, I have cultivated a limited gift to see.

The golden halla has come near enough to wet my outstretched fingers with her nose. I have been coaxed to sleep by her scent and the bright smell of new grass, the fire and the rot of the Qunari all but dissipated. I do not know if the spirits that serve this place removed their bodies, but the first that I returned, they were gone, the blood scrubbed away.

I have not seen Fen’Harel again, but I have witnessed his influence in the new arrivals to the sanctuary, their sallow, sunken cheeks restored to a new bloom once their vallaslin has been removed. I have been to an alienage only once and found the flat-ears' naked, haunted faces strange. But it is the opposite among these ancient elves: it is the tattooed refugees whose eyes are empty, and the bare-faced ones that welcome them who stand proudly and strong.

I know what I am waiting to see. I am waiting for Fen’Harel to take their vallaslin away because Solas did it for me. To me.

Wishing that I had more control over my movements in the Fade does not make it so. I cannot follow the elves who interest me, cannot seek out the Dread Wolf. The Fade is not the vibrant, living place for me alone that it was when I traveled with Solas. I must surrender to the fog of it, be ready to slip at any moment from the distant past to the abandoned future. These ruins have been empty for so long, perhaps as long as the gods have been locked away.

And I wonder, knowing what I know now about the Dread Wolf, what more is misunderstood about the deed? What parts of the story are lost? If Fen'Harel fought for freedom, what did the other gods fight for?

\--

The Deep Roads are drowned and with them, any answers I might have hoped to find connecting the ancient elves and the dwarves. Perhaps I will apply again, when this is over, for an audience in Orzammar.

I recall that Solas always spoke of Varric and Scout Harding as “children of the stone.” I found it charming and one evening, feeling bold enough to risk his ire, I’d asked him why.

“True dwarves aspire never to see the sun's light,” he’d replied calmly from his desk, amidst his papers. I’d wanted to be the quill perched between his long fingers. He had only kissed me and apologized for it, then. “Their natures are deep ones, secret, turning ever inward and down.”

“What about Varric? Or Dagna?” I’d stretched my legs out on the sofa. He finished a thought on the parchment before him, looking up and meeting my eyes.

“There will always be deviants, those who defy the molds into which they are born.”

I’d laughed then, holding his eyes until they broke from mine, traveling quickly down my frame and lingering only just on the curve of my hip and thigh. “The Inquisition is a haven for deviants, then,” I’d insisted. “I already know that because I’m Dalish, I’m hardly a ‘true’ elf in your estimation.”

Solas had abandoned his desk, strode away with his back to me. He’d still felt present, alive, real in a way he sometimes wasn’t even when he was closer, when he was looking right at me.

“It is not my estimation that should concern you,” he’d murmured, eyes on his mural. “And besides, you aren’t only Dalish. You’re something different.”

I’d never had the chance to ask him what he meant, sure that being the Inquisitor alone wouldn’t have been enough for him. Josephine had demanded my attention and I’d left him, looking away.

How many times had I left him, looking away?

Not so many as he left me, I think.   


	4. Our Small Wars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan dreams of the Dread Wolf. Inquisitor & co. explore the Vir Dirthara, and resolve to pursue the Qunari to the Darvaarad.

I saw a child in my dreams last night.

The elven ruins were new again and the child young. I wonder that it hasn’t occurred to me before how few children I have seen there – none, truly, before last night. In the clans we trafficked with and my own there were always little ones slipping between legs and secreting themselves in hiding places beneath their family’s aravels. In the alienage, too, I remember their begging eyes and many hands, friendlier and more persistent in their advances than their grown kin.

But in Fen’Harel’s sanctuary I have seen only adult refugees, their eyes steely with experience, their visages fierce when not softened in friendship.

The child bore the markings of Elgar'nan, just a touch at her chin and brow. We would never have tattooed one so young, but perhaps it was not the same in this time; not when the vallaslin was meant to brand, rather than to uplift.

I watched her pass from refugee to refugee, their touches gentle, parental, loving. Some cradled her on their laps, others swung her in wide, swift circles. I could not hear but could see the cries of joy on her face, in her little hops of pleasure when her feet touched the ground again.

And then the Dread Wolf came.

If I had been awake I would have held my breath. Maybe I did in my sleep, lying as still on my cot as I stood in the dream, desperate to keep from disrupting this reflection in the Fade.

He came from behind me and his back was to me before I realized he was there at all. I saw only a lean form in shining armor and on his head a wolf’s pelt, pristine and black. Where he walked the elves nodded in encouragement or dipped their heads briefly in reverence. He took a knee when he reached the child. He didn’t hold his arms out, as the others had done, but seemed to be studying her. Even from my vantage, his posture was not unwelcoming, but neither was it the easy grace one offers a child. The Dread Wolf knelt as an equal before her, inviting her to approach.

After a moment she did. I had wished many times in these ruins to be able to hear what passed between these shades, but never so much as then. I watched the play of emotions over the child’s face – hope and fear and curiosity – and saw Fen’Harel’s careful gestures, demonstrating what he would do. They exchanged a few more words, her small mouth rapid with questions, before his hands raised again in purpose.

The light was the same, blue and white and clean, obscuring her face completely and reflecting on the bare faces of the others. They smiled and marveled and I did, too. Some of them wept. I did, too.

Only after she had blinked and touched her face and seen something in his did the Dread Wolf lift the child. Her whip-thin arms looped over his shoulders, brushing against the fur to expose his bare neck and a single braid, nut-brown. He was turning, had turned, but the light was still in my eyes and my tears, too. I did not see his face, only noted his gait, graceful and unhindered by the weight of the girl in his arms. I woke blurry-eyed and surrendered to very real tears.

What I never asked Solas about the Fade was how he could stand it, returning again and again to places that exist only in memory, aware that he is likely the only living soul to have a thought or care for worlds long dead. For people. Dreams are one thing. But this is real. They were real.

And now they’re all dead, and their struggles with them.

It makes our wars seem small, by comparison.

\--

I cannot begin to describe the Vir Dirthara. Was it even really a library? It felt like the Fade – seeing one thing but knowing that it was another thing. They weren’t books, not really, but it was easier to understand them that way, so that’s what we saw.

There is so, so much about the ancient elves we don’t know. While I will never share Solas’ disdain for the Dalish, I can see the sense of his arguments now. We are nothing like they were.

But now I think I know something that he does not. What the Archivist told me about Fen’Harel and the Veil defies belief, but it didn’t seem like any demon or spirit I have encountered before, and certainly not the ones that have had cause or reason to lie to me.

I wish that I had hours to explore the Vir Dirthara, to dream away in the ruins. All of the answers to my questions seem to lie in what was, while my body and my will must be engaged in preventing what must never be. We cannot go to war with the Qunari. If I’ve learned anything from Bull, it’s that we will almost certainly lose.

\--

The anchor burns. If it is possible to feel one’s bones splintering to ash, I think this is what that must feel like.

I am not ashamed for the time I took to cry alone before we depart for the Darvaarad, but I am shamed that I didn’t want to be alone – and at my disappointment that it was Cassandra who came to comfort me at last, and not someone who long ago chose to abandon us.

To abandon me.

“I know you’ve never been a believer,” she said carefully, resplendent in her Divine’s armor. “But you must admit that there is something about recent events that feels fated to be. Two years without incident, and now everything all at once? The Counsel, the Qunari, _this_.”

 She gestured at the aching hand I cradled in my lap, continued without my prompting in a softer voice.

“You are not yet entirely without hope. I have many resources at my disposal, and surely Tevinter has some field of study devoted to aberrant magic.”

I barked a laugh.

“I’m sure I’ve never heard you speak in so favorable a light of our friends in the North,” I said, managing a grin. Cassandra scoffed.

“Your friends, perhaps,” she insisted, her words giving way to a sigh. “I suppose Dorian has become slightly more bearable, with time.”

“You can learn to bear anything, with time,” I replied, meeting her eyes. There was real worry there, and I forced a cheerfulness for the friendship I had sorely missed. “Even Varric.”

It was Cassandra’s turn to laugh, a bright sound that belied her next words.

“ _Never_ Varric.”

I will be glad to have them both with me for what lies ahead.


	5. Var Lath Vir Suledin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wish it could, vhenan."
> 
> But it is my turn to know what can and will be. My turn, this time.
> 
> \--
> 
> The final confrontation in Trespasser, and straying into non-canon territory after. I have some ideas to keep this going, and every intention to do so, and absolutely welcome feedback and thoughts.

_I wish it could, vhenan._

Never have I experienced such exquisite pain. Not in the hours under Keeper Deshanna’s needle. Not in battle at the hands of the Red Templars, the Venatori, the Darkspawn. Not when I imagined my heart broken open by Solas’ words in the grove, when I would have paid almost any price to get him to listen, to reason, to see.

_Var lath vir suledin._

And now _I_ see.

After two years of diversions, of pretense, of thinking myself beyond the reach of his capacity to hurt me, I have seen him and shown myself new ways of being wrong.

 “And now you know. What is the old Dalish curse? ‘May the Dread Wolf take you?’”

“And so he did.”

Irony and devastation and wonder all competed for control of my heart. I had witnessed the extent of his power and still I could not make it make sense. Did it matter that he had been Solas first? The man who’d stood before me, who’d stood beside me, who had loved and left me, was the Dread Wolf.

And yet, so much of what I had learned in the ruins and what I had seen in the Fade aligned with the heart I knew: wild and stern in equal measure, principled but fierce. Never compromised, never compromising.

Almost never.

He was lean and beautiful in his armor, his eyes dark with want, as he answered every question. I never wanted him to stop talking for all his words demanded that I condemn him.

But I can’t.

They found me howling, I’m told, crumpled before the impenetrable eluvian. I was burning with fever, my arm a cauterized ruin. Even now I can feel the heat from his hands as he withdrew the magic his orb had granted me and my arm with it, breaking the first unwitting bond between us. The others we had meant to make, for all we both came to regret them.

I feel, too, the press of his lips, hot and sure and tender. How is it that he has the strength to touch again and still let go?

I hate him for all that he has given and taken away. And I love him. Knowing that he is Fen’Harel changes nothing. Knowing what he plans changes nothing. Or rather, it doesn’t change how I feel, only what I must do.

_Var lath vir suledin._

_I wish it could, vhenan._

But it is my turn to know what can and will be. My turn, this time.

\--

I do not think the council expected me to disband the Inquisition, for all they professed to hope for it. I think they realize they still have much to fear from me.

Especially now.

“Chuckles the ancient elven god? I couldn’t write this shit,” Varric said with a low whistle after I’d explained what had happened after I’d raced ahead through the eluvian. “Explains why he didn’t always get my jokes.”

Cassandra huffed.

“It hasn’t occurred to you that you simply aren’t funny?”

She was fussing over me, as much as her Divine duties allowed. Her influence had secured the finest physician in Halamshiral. Morning, noon, and night what was left of my arm was bathed in herbal waters, every day for the past three days and those delirious days before. The memory of another fevered recovery, the ministrations of other once-strange hands, plagued me. Cassandra saw it in my eyes, her own narrowing with concern.

“You truly believe that you can turn him from this course?”

“Turn him or stop him, if I have to.”

“I do not like it,” she said, tone crisp. “And I like even less that you must do this work in Tevinter. You will be beyond the reach of the Chantry.” Cassandra meant that I would be parted from her, and what little protection she could offer. Her friendship.

“I know,” I admitted, fingering my empty sleeve. “But it is the safest place to begin to rebuild.”

“’Safe’ is damned subjective, Inquisitor,” Varric replied in rare agreement. “The Magisterium respects power, and we’ve exhausted ours.”

“We?” I asked, an edge of hope in my voice. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about Kirkwall being unable to spare you.”

Varric frowned, but I could see him wavering.

“The idea of sending you off with only Sparkler for company seems particularly stupid, even for us,” he answered. “He’s made a name for himself. _Names_ , and not all of them nice.”

“We won’t be without friends for long,” I murmured, thinking of the Inquisition’s first few vulnerable months:  of Haven, of tenuous alliances, of lingering in the snow and growing used to the feel of boots and the sound of Solas’ voice as he spoke to me of the Fade. “Leliana is gathering those she can trust, and Cullen is confident that a number of ex-Templars could be persuaded to join us.”

“Spies and former Lyrium addicts,” Cassandra replied with a sigh. “We have begun with less.”

I reached for her hand, squeezing her fingers. “And wanted for little more.”

I miss them both already.

\--

I was afraid that when I dreamed it would be as it had been when I was a girl, all shadows and nonsense, mundane reflections of my own life. I thought that with the anchor he would have taken this, too. But he didn't.

Not yet, anyway.

I went through the eluvian the night before the morning when we were to depart Halamshiral. I was not surprised to find nearly all of the mirrors in the crossroads impassable, grateful that the one I wanted remained active.

The sanctuary was bathed in moonlight, clean and cool and so bright my eyes watered.

But I was only crying.

I went to the mural again and this time I touched it with the fingers of my remaining hand, with my bare cheek, with tear-damp lips.

My love, my love. How am I supposed to do this without him? _To_ him? For him.

I half-hoped that I would find him there, now that I know that he knew I was following him all along. But the sanctuary was empty. Solas has always shown more restraint than me, than any mortal man. Because he isn’t, of course. I know that now.

When I dreamed, slumped against the base of the mural, I stretched both hands before me, pale and whole. It was night in the dream, too, many nights of elves in hushed groups patrolling, watching, waiting. I moved recklessly forward, more afraid of not making the most of this last night than I was of breaking the spell. I stalked the chambers above and below, wandered until I found what I sought: a lone figure in the sanctuary depths, curled over a desk in a posture so dear I nearly cried out.

The Dread Wolf, Fen’Harel, _Solas_ , sat poring over the contents of a letter I could not read, his ageless features nevertheless seeming young, vibrant. Dark braids, brutally tight against his scalp, fell past his shoulders. Abandoned on the desk was the skull of a wolf, the silk he used to bind it to his brow spilling out beneath. I grew as close as I dared, close enough that in the waking world I would have felt his breath on my face. I saw him in that moment and the next and the next, and so many before. He paced the chamber, consulted with trusted advisors; he was frequently alone, reading, writing, sometimes sleeping.

There was a cot in the chamber, far too modest for a god but there he lay all the same, by turns fitful and serene. The Fade remembered him in every detail, familiar and strange. He had not lied about the sort of man that he had been: he was bolder and brighter here, quicker to feeling and possessed of fewer means of disguising it.

I willed the Fade to cease with layered reflections and give me one of his resting form, awake but near enough to sleep to lie still. It nearly broke me to see his eyes seeing through me but I kept mine open, following the narrow angle of his cheek, the slope of his nose, his pointed chin. I wanted to occupy the same space that he did, to be inside of him as he had been inside of me. If he were a demon, I would have wanted him to posses me. I would have begged for it.

And I had, once.

What was it that he’d said?

“I did not lead a rebellion against immortal mage-kings without getting my hands bloody.”

Here was that Solas, the trickster god, a man capable of unspeakable terrors. He believed that he was right, but was so willing to be wrong. I thought of all of the times he had tried to retreat from me but hadn’t, or couldn’t.

I don’t know if I can stop him, but I stopped taking “no” for an answer from him long before I loved him.

\--

When I woke, I was alone on the stone floor and aching all over. I stumbled back to the palace, to my chamber and my undisturbed bed.

Except, it wasn’t.

Tucked between the coverlet and the silken pillow was a dark jawbone, polished smooth, a cord knotted securely at the base to allow for it to be worn. I’d seized it immediately, raced from the room and madly around our encampment. When I found Leliana, she explained that another of our elven servants had gone missing before dawn. I had no doubt where they had gone, or of their true master.

I wear it now beneath my tunic, hot against my breast even as his trail cools. But hope has no temperature, and it is before me as certainly as the road is.  


	6. Hold On, Vhenan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road to Minrathous. Post-Trespasser with a bit of remembered smut courtesy of Lavellan's dreaming mind. Or, here we go into fully non-canon territory.

Dorian’s entourage is modest, for a Magister, but still it is not at like it was when we traveled as agents of the Inquisition – when I was the Inquisitor. I am Dorian’s guest, and am inclined to think that by the looks his people give me, he’s told them that he was solely responsible for Corypheus’ downfall.

Better they think the world of him. He may yet survive his tenure in the Magisterium.

We patronize inns when we find them and our pace is our own. No one expects us, and no great force hounds us. I am glad for it, as it’s not easy to remain long astride my horse and I know that I am slowing us down. My balance has shifted, the center of myself not quite where it was before. I can hold on well enough, but my hips and legs ache at the end of the day for compensating, my jaw tight from grinding in frustration. I suppose it’s lucky I reached for the orb with my offhand. If I could not write, or had to learn again, I’d be lost.

It was Varric who offered this small gratitude. He travels with us as far as Kirkwall, where we’ll book passage for the remainder of the journey to Minrathous.

“It’s not all bad, Inquisitor,” he’d said. I didn’t bother correcting him on my abandoned title. “You can still hold a quill, a bottle, a hand. What more do you need?”

“I can think of a number of situations in which you wouldn’t need even _one_ hand, let alone two,” Dorian remarked to the tittering appreciation of his servants. I hoped that they were servants. I am steeling myself yet for the sight of elven slaves in Tevinter. The state of alienages and wages in Ferelden are hardly cause for celebration, but my people are free, at least, to some degree.

And knowing now what I do of Solas’ plans, they might soon be freer still. But for how long?  And has he told those who serve him what he plans? Do they imagine they will be spared?

But perhaps if I’d been raised in an alienage, any sacrifice would be worth seeing the elven people restored to glory. I might have resigned myself to all the Dalish have gotten wrong, but there are things worth preserving about our world, our stories, the traditions we had shaped in ignorance.

Obviously, Solas does not agree.

“If you’re not going to take one of these adoring boys to your bed, would you consider drinking alone in your chamber? For my sake,” Dorian said with a dramatic sigh, joining me after we’d had a modest but filling meal at an inn a few days east of the palace. “They’re hardly willing to fill my cup when you're sulking prettily by the fire.”

I raised a brow, looking past him to the trio of elves, employed by the inn, clutching bottles of wine and rags for washing up. They were hardly grown, but one with dark hair braided loosely over one shoulder dared to wink at me.

“You can’t mean to take one of them to _your_ bed,” I replied, looking away from the bold one with a faint blush in my cheeks. “I’ve seen how you look at Bull. _Heard_ , in fact, quite recently.”

Dorian’s grin was coy.

“Cunning devices, sending crystals,” he replied smoothly, though his expression quickly softened to something sweet, sincere, and he held my eyes. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“Does that work with anyone?”

“No. But you can’t blame me for trying,” I insisted. My cup was empty, and one of the servants rushed over to fill it, eyes lingering appreciatively on me even as they filled Dorian’s, as well. He huffed before taking a swallow, shooing the servant away.

“Do you see? A night of careless pleasure would serve you well. And perhaps remind this rabble the meaning of _service_.”

“I can’t, Dorian,” I whispered, drinking deeply. It would be easy, and it would probably even be nice, but it wouldn’t be fair.

And it wasn’t what I wanted.

Dorian didn’t press me, calling instead to Varric to bring his cards and his silver. Wicked Grace and more wine chased the evening’s gloom away, and when Dorian helped me to my room – too familiar, memories of Skyhold circling close – his words welcomed only a little sadness.

“You know he doesn't deserve this devotion.”

“He told me the same thing, once.”

\--  

I dreamed of winter in Skyhold, and I did not try to stray from the memory my sleeping mind offered. It was a good one.

Winters in Skyhold were fierce. Even with all of our preparations and all of the urgency of the war, we could not fight Corypheus and the mountains, too. Sometimes, we had to wait out the weather.

Snow drifted nearly to the tops of the ramparts, paths carved to the surgery, the forge, the stables, but more coming down all of the time. There was plenty of room in the castle for everyone, and for many of the beasts, besides, but it was a close thing. Fires roared with diplomats and soldiers both huddled around them, rank and birth forgotten when meat and bread and beer must be shared.

Solas had joined me in my chambers, giving up his own cot and the rotunda’s comforts to quarter a number of the Inquisition’s mages. It was hardly an inconvenience – he was often in my bed that winter, anyway. We’d rationed the wood by virtue of never getting out of it, secreted beneath a heap of furs and fine blankets, mage lights and whispers illuminating bare flesh.

“Tell me, how do you walk so lightly upon the snow?” I’d asked, remembering the trek to the castle and Solas’ slim feet almost soundless on the climb. “You are like one of our hunters. It is a skill I’ve never learned.”

“I know, vhenan,” he’d replied with a smirk, leaning near to my face. There was not much space beneath the blankets. “I’ve seen you stomping through sand and mud and snow.”

“At least I’m easy to track.”

“Our enemies certainly celebrate it.”

“What would you suggest?” I’d resisted the urge to trace the line of his jaw with my lips, work my way from his chin to his ear and then to all of the rest of him.

“I could carry you.” His words were accompanied by an arm sweeping around and beneath me. We’d built up heat enough beneath the blankets with our bodies and our breath that I was wearing only my tunic and small clothes. Solas’ fingers trailed from my collarbone and lower, drawn lightly down one of my breasts beneath the fine-spun silk. “Or perhaps we’ll plant you upon the Iron Bull’s shoulders. I rather think you’d enjoy issuing orders from so great a height.”

I laughed but it shifted to a groan when Solas pressed his hand into my small clothes, two fingers dipping quickly inside, and out again.

“Do you think he’d let me hold on?”

“Are you attempting to make me jealous, vhenan?”

Quicker, with a bit of a _flick_ from his longest finger.

“It was your suggestion.”

“So it was,” Solas murmured, catching my mouth with his, his tongue sliding into my mouth, pressing, exploring, testing and tasting me. I wriggled out of my small clothes, lifting my hips to his as he released my mouth and kissed my neck. I heard him in my ear as he entered me.

“Hold on, vhenan.”

And I had.

\--

Dorian and Varric seem to agree about only one thing as we make our approach into Kirkwall.

I won’t like it.


	7. Clan Sabrae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can come and go as please in the city and even leave it, if I wish. But I don’t feel as safe as I once did: the anchor an indomitable force in one hand, my staff spinning in the other. It doesn’t matter that I lived most of my life without the anchor’s power – for all I wanted it gone at first, now I miss the hum and the glow, the connection to another world.
> 
> And to Solas, though I didn’t know it at the time.
> 
> \--
> 
> Lavellan arrives in Kirkwall and seeks out Clan Sabrae. There are surprises.
> 
> Updates may be a bit slow for the next few chapters, unless I fly through my first play through of DA2 - don't ask me how I've never played, I'm sure I can't tell you. I've got some threads I'd like to weave in but I want to do it with fidelity and without completely spoiling the story for myself, so.

Leliana noted the jawbone today, a slim finger looping underneath of the cord and tugging the talisman free from its hiding place beneath my tunic.

“That’s new.”

She misses _nothing_.

“And here I thought you were spying for me, not on me.”

She’d been in Kirkwall for nearly a week by the time we’d arrived and was already recruiting. No doubt she attempted to correspond with me within the last few weeks, but as I’d spent the voyage alternating between lying sick in my bunk and leaning miserably over the side of the vessel, I’d have missed even the most persistent raven.

“When?” Her question, like that of any spymaster’s, was many questions.

“I haven’t seen him since that day, in the eluvian.” The day he’d taken my arm and broken my heart, again. I stroked a finger over the dulled teeth and felt a phantom nip, his mouth on my shoulder, my neck, my wrist. “He left it for me, by proxy.”

“At least we have some idea of his weakness,” Leliana observed, expression calculating. I shook my head, too quickly, tucking the jawbone back beneath my tunic.

“This was goodbye,” I insisted, but even I wasn’t convinced, or maybe I just didn’t want to be.

“A man does not lure the woman he loves –”

“Loved.”

She continued, undaunted by my interruption.

“A man does not lure a woman to a secluded ruin, lay the whole of his plans before her, and never hope to see her again.”

“He’s not a man. He’s a god, or near enough to one,” I insisted. Leliana smirked, as though I were bragging over having bedded him, and I blushed.

“Whatever Solas might be, he is hardly immune to mortal cravings.”

My blush deepened. Leliana knew more than most, more even than I assumed she did, surely. But she was wrong. The Dread Wolf was as keen to suffer himself as he was to resign others to their suffering.

I’d put her off and returned to my chambers in the Viscount’s estate, Varric’s estate, to write.

He and Dorian were right. I do not like Kirkwall. It has all the weight of stone of Val Royeaux but none of the beauty. The sea and sky seem close enough to touch and yet I feel walled in, shackled as the weeping figures that greeted us from the cliffs.

There are more human servants than elven ones, though I gather this is less a mark of Kirkwall’s progressive politics and more the result of many of the city’s elves abandoning the alienage and Kirkwall altogether. Varric offered to have someone escort me to the alienage, but I have no desire to see it. I have never felt kin to the flat-ears that live in human cities for all my circumstances are nearer theirs than any Dalish elf, now. But knowing what I do of Arlathan, I don’t think I could bear to see them so reduced.

I do not sympathize with Solas, but I can imagine his horror better.

The Sabrae clan are residing still at the base of Sundermount, and Varric’s stories of the mountain tempt me almost as much as the thought of being among the Dalish again. I long for the smells of camp, the taste of spiced root vegetables roasted over a fire, the stories of the people from their own mouths – even if I might wonder now how much is truth and how much is fantasy.

There is a story about the Sabrae, though, that Varric will not tell. It is nothing like his coy dodging about Bianca, but something darker, something from his past. As with many of his stories, I suspect Hawke is involved. I do not think my curiosity will be satisfied by his admission or the clan’s, but there’s always the Fade.

\--

I can come and go as please in the city and even leave it, if I wish. But I don’t feel as safe as I once did: the anchor an indomitable force in one hand, my staff spinning in the other. It doesn’t matter that I lived most of my life without the anchor’s power – for all I wanted it gone at first, now I miss the hum and the glow, the connection to another world.

And to Solas, though I didn’t know it at the time.

It was late afternoon when I sighted the aravels. I made myself come alone for fear shemlin would not be received – though I suppose I am as good as, bare-faced and dressed in leathers shaped by human hands. The hunters had been tracking me for at least an hour, so I knew I was not taking anyone by surprise. They must’ve deemed me no threat, though a mage hardly needs two hands to set a camp ablaze.

I’d passed their statues, too – Fen’Harel’s wolfish face turned away from the camp, a warning and a threat. Staff tucked against my body, I’d been unable to resist touching a hand to the snout of one whose visage was almost completely worn away by weather and time.

Two hunters met me at the camp’s perimeter, silently joined by the pair that had trailed me coming up behind.

“Aneth ara.” I greeted them before they could deny me. “I am first to Clan Lavellan and would speak to your Keeper.”

It was only a little lie. As far as I knew, I had not been replaced. But I had not returned to the Lavellan, and they had made no efforts to reach me within the past two years.

“Garas quenathra, stranger?” This from one of the hunters who had followed me, moving into the periphery of my sight. Her face was hard, made harder by Andruil’s markings on her brow and cheeks. “The first of Clan Lavellan is one of the people, a mighty warrior who cowed the humans and struck down demons at the head of their Inquisition.”

Her look was all I needed to know that she saw nothing of the Dalish, of a warrior, in me. I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t know the truth. Most Dalish had so little traffic with the world of humans that I was lucky to be known to her at all, if not quite as I would like to be.

“I am, I _was_ , the Inquisitor. I mean you no harm and seek only an audience with your Keeper,” I answered, appealing to the group, rather than meet the hard one’s eyes again. Only one among them seemed inclined to do anything but stick in an arrow in me, and it was he who shifted his posture, creating a path into the camp.

“Andaran atish’an, Inquisitor,” he said. He was young – painfully – but we shared a smile all the same as he led me into the camp, the remaining Dalish and their blades at our heels. Curious elders and children and others looked up from their work as we passed, their whispers beyond my hearing. He led me to where a figure knelt over a fire, the smell of sweet, medicinal herbs burning so potent with nostalgia that I closed my eyes briefly. The one who had guided me stepped back, and the figure rose, turning.

He was human.

After a moment of shocked study on my part which the man allowed with no comment, he spoke, tone distant but kind.

“I am Feynriel,” he offered, an elven name ill-fitting his appearance. “You look like you have a story to tell. Come, sit by my fire, and tell it.”

So I did, and I did.

\--

Feynriel is not Clan Sabrae’s Keeper, but he is as good as. They are a strange clan – perhaps made stranger by what they have experienced, living at the base of the mountain. He would not tell me what became of their previous Keeper, or much even about himself, though he insisted that despite his appearance, he was Dalish-born.

“Do you not claim the same?” He’d argued with the measured patience of a much older man. “You have no vallaslin, no halla, no clan that travels with you, and yet you count yourself among the People.”

It didn’t serve my ends to press him, so I didn’t. I wanted only to ask about Sundermount and what the Sabrae knew of the fabled ruin at its peak, but Feynriel had many questions about the Inquisition and what came after. None of his clan have gone missing, so perhaps Solas’ reach does not yet extend into the Free Marches.

When he had done questioning me, I was fed, and given sweet wine the likes of which I hadn’t tasted for years. Feynriel extended an invitation to me to remain in the camp in the evening and I accepted, to the chagrin of the female hunter but very few others. And so I gained at least one of my aims for the venture, which was to sleep in a new place. There will be time for more questions in the morning.

\--

 

The Dalish camp was heavy with domestic reflections in the Fade, hunters coming and going, children playing, stoked fires covered with earth each night, over and over again so much the act itself could have been a spirit, animated by repetition. I walked through these shades, not idle but not with specific purpose, either. After my night in the sanctuary I had grown bolder in my wanderings – I risked losing the thread of the dream but now weighed the greater risk of missing something just beyond the scope of my perception.

And so it was that I walked right into a trap.

These forests little resemble those of the Exalted Plains, but the ground shifted beneath my feet, too subtle, such that I thought I walked into one of my own dreams. And I suppose after a fashion that is what it was, at first.

It was night and Solas stood looking out across the barren plains from the tree line, his staff in two hands with a slight cant to his hip as he leaned his weight against it. I walked to him, followed his eyes across the ruined landscape.

“I never thought I’d see the Dales,” I’d said. Solas had cut his eyes to me, briefly.

“It is not the Dales, any longer. It is a wasted land, broken under the boots of the ignorant.”

He’d been brooding. We knew his friend, the spirit, was near, and the danger they were in was souring every word, every look, Solas exchanged with me. He wasn’t even talking to the others, then.

I didn’t want to offer him hope that I couldn’t deliver on, but neither was I content to let him suffer alone. I’d chosen not to speak but had moved closer, close enough to touch but not touching. Solas surprised me when, after a moment, he shifted his weight, our shoulders brushing. He pressed ever so slightly into me as though he attempted to ground himself. I’d been too stunned to move.

At the time, we’d stood like that in companionable silence until we were called to return to the camp. Because I was dreaming I took liberties, snaked my arm around his waist, tucked myself into him, eager for his scent, the feel of his skin.

But he was a phantom and I felt nothing, smelled nothing. I walked away from him, chewing my lip in agony.

And that’s when I saw Feynriel, watching me, solid and real as my dream collapsed around us.

“You’re a Dreamer, then,” Feynriel observed. He did not smile, his expression every bit as grave as a wizened Keeper. “We have much to discuss, lethallan.”


	8. A Lonely Traveler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Bad business with a Pride demon and Dais – a Dalish who got in too deep,” Varric said, not looking at me. There were a variety of contracts and negotiations scattered on the desk before him but he held Bianca in his lap, polishing the stock. “An ugly way to go, Inquisitor. I don’t recommend it.”
> 
> I sighed, perched on one of the plush chairs in the Viscount’s study.
> 
> “You know ‘Solas’ is the Elvhen word for ‘pride,’ right?”
> 
> “Well, then I expect you know what I mean,” was all Varric said, though he did open a bottle of Tevinter red and didn’t comment when I drank more than my share.
> 
> \--
> 
> Lavellan dreams, talks with Feynriel, drinks with Dorian, and dreams again. Soon, Sundermount.
> 
> \--
> 
> Still working my way so-very-slowly through DA2 but I haven't been able to resist spoiling myself on the game to allow for an update.

Solas never let me watch him work on the murals in the rotunda. It wasn’t that he wanted to preserve the mystery of their creation – I had seen his tools and had enough of an idea to figure it out on my own. But rather, he explained to me once that he began with only part of an idea. He worked all night and more for each, without stopping to sleep or rest, such that the mural came to its full meaning and intent as he might have happened into a dream, on any other night.

He showed me sketches, elegant lines smudged in the places where he had tried to change directions or start over, start differently. There were no likenesses amongst his drawings, no places or people that I recognized. Once in the Emerald Graves I’d asked if it was his dreams of Arlathan that compelled him to create these remembrances, and instead of answering he’d led me into the woods, heedless of the others watching in the camp.

We only went far enough that they wouldn’t hear my cries, tunic hitched about my hips, Solas’ mouth savage at my neck, my breast.

His appetites consumed me then, for debating too long into the night, for the wilds, for the Fade. For other things. I would have followed him anywhere.

Is it possible to defy him now without risking that I would still?

\--

Feynriel says that I am a Somniari, as he is. It is a Tevinter word to describe our capacity to travel and influence in dreams. Feynriel is not Tevinter, for all he spent many years learning with the Magisters after a fateful encounter with the Champion.

But I do not think Feynriel and I are the same. I cannot enter the dreams of others, and I have failed as often as I have succeeded in changing my own dreams. It is because of Solas, I think, rather than an innate gift. He woke something in me long dormant, perhaps, or created an opening to share a part of himself with me.

It has been two days since I woke in the Dalish camp with Feynriel at my side, studying me with interest and not a little bit of fear. Even in Tevinter, he met no other Dreamers.

“We are vulnerable to temptation, more than even the most powerful mages,” he explained. “I didn’t want to leave the Magisterium.”

“Why did you?”

We were sitting close together in the dark but I saw more in his eyes than most.

“Did you know that the ancient elves once slumbered on Sundermount?” He offered, not answering my question and, perhaps as he intended, piquing my interest in another direction. “It was a sacred place of uthenera in the time of Arlathan.”

 I had and still have so many questions but I didn’t want to be baited. “Did you learn that in Tevinter?”

No,” Feynriel insisted. “I learned that from Keeper Marethari before she died.”

He wouldn’t tell me how she died, and after I’d returned to Kirkwall with an invitation from Fenyriel to join him on Sundermount within the week, I asked Varric.

“Bad business with a Pride demon and Dais – a Dalish who got in too deep,” Varric said, not looking at me. There were a variety of contracts and negotiations scattered on the desk before him but he held Bianca in his lap, polishing the stock. “An ugly way to go, Inquisitor. I don’t recommend it.”

I sighed, perched on one of the plush chairs in the Viscount’s study.

“You know ‘Solas’ is the Elvhen word for ‘pride,’ right?”

“Well, then I expect you know what I mean,” was all Varric said, though he did open a bottle of Tevinter red and didn’t comment when I drank more than my share.

I want to go to Sundermount, and I want to know more about what Feynriel knows about the Dreamers. Still, I’m not sure that I trust him, and I’m sure he doesn’t trust me. It would be easy enough to communicate with my clan, to hear more of my story and to wonder why I haven’t made contact of my own. And he is a respected flat-ear among the Dalish, who are already disappearing in service to the Dread Wolf.

Feynriel would make a good ally, and a better spy.

But I need to see the mountain. I need to see the sort of place Solas might have dreamed, perhaps the place he _did_ dream, for all those centuries. I know it’s not just because I’m hoping I’ll learn something that will help us in the battles ahead.

I know that I want to be close to him, too, even if it’s only a memory of him that I am close to.

\--

They have not rebuilt the Chantry in Kirkwall. Instead it has been reclaimed as a communal meeting place, a garden with stunted, struggling trees and equally striving common folk joining their hands in work, business, and governance. At night there are lanterns and music, eating and talking and a vitality I find I don’t even see in the city during the day. Perhaps it’s the starlight, but Kirkwall at night, in this place, feels like the seed of something new stubbornly growing in the ruin of something old.

Though Dorian considers my evening walks there a “hazardous fascination with the slums,” he came with me tonight.

“I’ve never heard of this Feynriel of yours,” he said, tone lofty. I could tell he was disappointed, perhaps even offended, that there was something about the Magisterium he _didn’t_ know. “A half-breed Somniari studying under human Magisters? I can’t imagine what a scandal that must have been.”

“Not everyone revels in drawing as much attention to themselves as you do,” I retorted, though my words had none of the acid that Solas’ might have. “I get the impression he tried not to make a spectacle of himself.”

“What a bore,” Dorian answered with a satisfied sniff. We passed a cart selling hot wine and warm, spiced nuts, and I fished for my purse, buying one of each to share. Dorian grimaced. “Street food? You have not sunk so low.”

“Don’t presume,” I insisted, grinning as I tucked the steaming paper bag under one arm. “I’ll find someone willing to feed them to you one by one.”

Dorian lifted the tin mug of wine from my hand, teeth bared before he took a swallow.

“And _I_ have not sunk so low.”

\--

I return to Sundermount tomorrow but tonight I dreamed. I am awake and hardly able to catch the breath I nearly lost in sleep.

Kirkwall has an ancient and bloody history. Spirits in the Fade are eager to cast forth visions of lives interrupted or ruined, centuries of slavery enough to make even the stone reflect misery. For all I avoid it when I am awake, I make my way to the alienage when I am asleep – it is one of the few places that possesses a warmth, the persistent hope of those who have scrabbled out a living there.

And tonight.

Do I even know what it was that I saw? Or what I thought I saw? Not even with my eyes but with my whole body, limp in repose and wandering in the Fade, I felt something.

The vhenadahl is ageless in the Fade, appearing not only as it has throughout the ages it has grown, but also as it is esteemed by those who live there, a glorious sanctuary. Offerings are heaped at its base and memories weave like ribbons about the trunk, hanging from the branches, welcoming my feet on the stones. The figures of children huddled there in my dreams tonight, their hands outstretched, beckoning.

But not to me.

In the alley crouched a massive wolf, a creature that should have inspired terror, even in the Fade. Its eyes were trained on the children not as a predator might, but as though it took the measure of them. And then it looked at me, looked _into_ me, yellow eyes bright with intelligence.

I know I want so badly for some sign from him, that I will reach and reach until I have convinced myself. Still, the wolf padded backwards almost immediately, hackles raised in alarm. I feel so certain that it was startled to see me there. Like a fool I started forward, calling out for him even as the dream began to disintegrate around me.

It is worse than being undone by a first kiss in the Fade, to wake crying out for your lover, a traitorous god, a phantom wolf in the Fade. A lonely traveler.  
  
I suppose we have that in common now.


	9. Of Sundermount and Skyhold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wolf crouched there, white fur snarled, eyes far too intelligent even for so keen a predator. We locked eyes and the beast stiffened immediately, scampered back. But this was my dream. I darted forward with a grace my waking limbs could not replicate, seizing the wolf by the scruff of the neck and pressing my forehead into the plane between its eyes. A true beast would have snapped at me and I braced myself, anticipating the pain.
> 
> The sound of his voice was a pain infinitely sweeter.
> 
> \--
> 
> Feynriel and Lavellan camp on Sundermount. Lavellan forces an encounter with Solas in the Fade.

Feynriel and I are camped within a few hours hike of Sundermount’s peak. We could have gone on, but he insisted it was not a place for any sort of restful sleep – even this close, I do not know if it is the anticipation that keeps me awake or something else.

I wonder what memories wait in the ruins, if Feynriel’s presence will prove a stabilizing force and allow me greater access to the mysteries of so ancient a place.

As Solas had done for me.

Once, when we returned to Skyhold from Adamant, we spent an entire night in a crumbling cove near the river in the Exalted Plains. Even as I write now I can feel the silt-grit beneath my bare legs, his fingers drawing frost from my toes to my hips.

“The veil is thin here,” he said, eyes closed. “But it is not blood only that the Fade reflects. Look, vhenan.”

Solas pressed himself against me, his warm, wintry scent filling my nose and lungs. Instead of reaching for his trousers as I’d been of a mind to do I found myself drawn down into sleep, safe and heavy in his arms. We fell together into the Fade, deep, tarrying not even a moment in the places where the Exalted March marched on forever.

As it had been in the Western Approach, there was a world long forgotten here, green and vital. Solas held my hand and we walked forward together into the water, brilliantly colored fish dancing without fear around our ankles. The sky felt near enough to gather in my hands, silken blue. Elegant boats skimmed the surface of the river, their sails iridescent and paper-thin, the figures on their decks moving with incalculable grace. My chest ached with want.

“It’s too beautiful,” I murmured, knowing that I saw a reflection only; wondering if I would even have been able to perceive Arlathan’s true beauty. The Dalish were painfully diminished, compared to this. I would never have belonged. 

Solas turned my face to his with two fingers gently cradling my chin.

“I have seen many such wonders in my travels in the Fade,” he said, searching my eyes. “It has been a very long time since I wanted to share them with anyone else.”

“But not never,” I said, trying to be playful, though I didn’t feel it. “There have been others.”

Solas’ expression darkened, unreadable, and he looked back out across the river. “There have been others, but not like you. Not like this.”

A gale of laughter from one of the boats shattered the silence that threatened to settle between us.

“I suppose I must thank them, for your patience,” I teased, gathering my sadness and uncertainty like clay, creating a ball of it that I could swallow and ignore. For a time.

It broke the spell between us, my forced humor. It made the ease I wanted real. Solas’ smile was sly.

“I am not so very patient,” he insisted, hands slipping about my waist, traveling down, long fingers brushing the tops of my thighs.

I’d woken then or perhaps Solas had woken me, his lips suddenly on mine, hungry and sweet. His knee parted my legs, breeches straining.

“Do not think of them, vhenan.” His hands moved smoothly under my tunic, clutching, slow. “I do not.”

I wonder now if that was a lie?

\--

It is the feel of this place that moves me more than the ruins themselves. There are few places that can stir the heart like the Temple of Mythal, like Fen’Harel’s Sanctuary, like the Vir Dirthara. But for a place of dreaming and sleeping, Sundermount has a restless energy. It is a grave disturbed, a tomb desecrated, for all the altars remain intact and well-tended. It is as though the ancient elves who once sought this place know what has become of the world and, helpless as spirits trapped in the Fade, charge the mountain air with their fury.

“What can you tell me of the uthenera?” I asked Feynriel as we walked among the stones, the lanterns haunting.

“Very little,” he replied. “It is a practice lost, with Arlathan.”

“It is not lost,” I insisted, voice low. I stopped before a low, flat stone where once a Dreamer might have lain. I wanted to lie down there to sleep, to feel the touch of spirit fingers upon my lips, taste the herbs and honey used to sustain those who slept.

I met Feynriel’s eyes, risked what I’d wanted to since I’d met him. “There are those who still sleep. There is one who has recently awakened.”

Feynriel took a breath, only the barely perceived widening of his eyes any indication that I had taken him by surprise. But not, I suspect, shared with him something he did not know.

He feigned ignorance and I withheld further details. I do not blame him - I would have done the same, had our roles been reversed. I have little interest in exposing my hand.

I only have the one, after all.

\--

We have had to shelter in a cave, as the winds are whipped to a frenzy on the mountain. We cannot hope to descend tonight. Feynriel is not sleeping and I am not, either. I feel more alone when I am awake, strangely enough, and I find I would rather be alone right now.

\--

I fell asleep despite my best efforts otherwise and I am aching and shaking all over and wishing I’d never woken up, no matter what important works await me. I am allowed that vulnerability here, when I must be strong everywhere else.

I dreamt that I was in Skyhold, that I stood in the chapel in the garden but instead of Andraste there was a statue of Mythal. I did not kneel but stood before her an indignant equal. I wished that I had drank from the Well, that I had a tongue to speak to her - to curse and beseech her.

In the dream I felt eyes on me, the same feeling I had learned to fear as a girl in the Fade, that a demon was near. I am much stronger now than I was then, so I turned to face the creature and be done with it.

Only.

It wasn’t.

A wolf crouched there, white fur snarled, eyes far too intelligent even for so keen a predator. It was the same wolf that I had seen in the alienage in Kirkwall, I was sure of it. We locked eyes and the beast stiffened immediately, scampered back. But this was _my_ dream. I darted forward with a grace my waking limbs could not replicate, seizing the wolf by the scruff of the neck and pressing my forehead into the plane between its eyes. A true beast would have snapped at me and I braced myself, anticipating the pain.

The sound of his voice was a pain infinitely sweeter.

“Hello, vhenan.”

Solas was clothed in an instant, a wolf no longer, on his knees before me, his lips near enough that his breath met mine.

“I should kill you.” My voice was ragged.

“You are welcome to try.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

I was holding on to his neck, staring into the storm cloud depths of his eyes. He was too close but I was afraid to let him go. Solas made the decision for me, lifting one of his hands from the stone to loosen my fingers from around his neck. For a moment I thought he might hold my hand - he kept it just long enough - but he did not.

He didn’t bolt, either.

“What are you doing here?” It was an accusation. I didn’t have anything else for him. He was dressed simply, not in the shining armor this time, though neither was he in the modest garb he’d adopted in Skyhold. Dorian would have approved of the richness of the fabrics, if not the style.

“I often dream of Skyhold.”

“Do you?” My tone was venomous. “I am not surprised. The Dread Wolf’s dreams must be filled with regrets.”

Solas did not bristle as I wanted him to, as he'd used to, when we argued. He only cast his eyes down, defeated before I had begun.

When he looked back up, his gaze was icy, distant. “What are you doing on Sundermount?”

“Have one of your spies tell you.”

We considered each other, a current like frost or lightning changing the Fade between us. The details in the chapel were beginning to grow fuzzy but I didn’t want to wake up.

“Why are you here,” I whispered, not a question, but a want. Solas’ expression shifted, like the earth upset during a quake.

“You know why, vhenan.”

Even as I opened my mouth to ask him not to call me something his deeds couldn't honor, he leaned forward, seized my mouth with his. It was a brutal kiss and it felt as real, as wild and unexpected, as the first time. I took my two whole hands and laced them around his neck once more; in tenderness, this time, green and golden light warming our bodies everywhere that we touched.

His lips burned a trail across my cheek, down my neck, my rough-spun cowl pushed aside. I wanted to weep. I wanted to scream. I bent my head against his shoulder, shaking with fury and desire. His words, spoken so many years ago, made their way to my lips.

“We shouldn’t. It isn’t right. Not even here.”

His breath steamed on my skin. I wanted a brand of it.

“Ir abelas.” His tone was penitent, but I didn’t want apologies, excuses.

“Let me help you, Solas.” I took his fine, sharp chin in my hands, made him look at me. “There has to be another way. _You don’t need to be alone._ ”       

The image of his friend, the spirit we had failed to save, flickered briefly into existence, stirred by the words and our shared memory of them. Solas stiffened. “I have already told you that you cannot.”

“And you’ve been wrong before.”

We looked at each other a long, heavy moment before Solas put his hands over mine, lifting them away and then dropping them as he stood, backing away from me.

“I will not visit you again.”

My grin was rueful at the sound of his stern voice, his empty proclamation. I fingered the wolf’s jaw I wore around my neck.

“Don’t make me another promise you don’t intend to keep, Solas.”

I woke up then, still holding his talisman, alone but for the sound of Feynriel’s sleeping breath.

I think if I am to change the Dread Wolf's heart, I must know it better.

 


	10. The Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The eluvian reminded me a little bit of the Well of Sorrows: lack of use having woken in it an eagerness, a hunger. I suppose Varric’s locking it up for good reason.
> 
> At least he’s given me the keys.
> 
> \--
> 
> Surprise!Merrill before Lavellan & co. leave for Minrathous, plus some other stuff.

Leliana arranged for the eluvian to be brought to Kirkwall.

“I did not think Skyhold was the best place for it,” she explained, though there was something in her voice, in her eyes, that said more. It isn’t just that Solas will potentially gain access to Skyhold – it’s that in Skyhold, the eluvian will be beyond my reach.

“Does it still work?” I felt a phantom twitching in the hand I no longer possessed to touch it, resisted it.

“She claims it does.”

“She?”

“Oh, yes,” Leliana replied, smirking. The woman loves her secrets. “Varric didn’t want the eluvian at his estate without an expert to tend to it, something about not having enough beer or blades to entertain Qunari mercenaries at midnight. She’s eager to meet you.”

‘She’ turned out to be another storied friend of the Champion’s, a Dalish named Merrill. Varric calls her Daisy, and I gather she once had a temperament that better fit the moniker. She’s intelligent and friendly, but there’s a darkness in her, a wariness, that reminds me too much of Solas. Something in her past may haunt her forever.

Hopefully she won’t devise as foolish a plan as Solas has to remedy her guilt.

“This one is quite a bit larger than I’ve seen. Very shiny,” she observed, circling the eluvian in the chamber where Varric had insisted it be installed. It was as far away from his own quarters as possible without actually being outside, and there were three locks on the door. “Leliana told me you found it intact.”

“It wasn’t the only one,” I replied, perched opposite, watching her and the eluvian both. “Though the last time I went through, the others weren’t functioning any longer.”

“Yes, the Crossroads,” Merrill breathed. “I’ve heard stories but I’ve never seen it for myself.”

I considered walking through the mirror just then and taking her with me, but I wasn’t ready. I had to grind out the hope of seeing Solas there, first, before I risked traveling to Fen’Harel’s Sanctuary again.

And the fear that I might no longer have access to the sanctuary, as well.

But Merrill didn’t press me, though the eluvian fairly hummed with both of us near. It reminded me a little bit of the Well of Sorrows: lack of use having woken in it an eagerness, a hunger. I suppose Varric’s locking it up for good reason.

At least he’s given me the keys.

\--

It has been four days since I returned to Kirkwall from Sundermount, and Dorian is eager to get underway. Final preparations are being made for the road west to Minrathous.

“It would be far more expedient to go entirely by sea,” Dorian told me, only partly in jest. His cutting observations as to the delicacy of my stomach during our crossing of the Waking Sea are still fresh. There will be some travel by boat either way, and he cannot begrudge me – too much – my desire for small stints over water.

Cullen has arrived, as well, having sent on far fewer recruits than he is happy with. And his forces are divided, at Leliana’s insistence – only a score of soldiers and templars with each of her scouts, moving covertly by land.

“This battle will not be won by a dozen men running and hiding,” he said, curling his fist over a map of the Imperium.

“This _battle_ is not a battle at all,” Leliana retorted. “We have very little intelligence, fewer allies, and no means of striking at our enemy.”

“All the more reason not to diminish what resources we have through unnecessary subterfuge.”

It is strange to hear them arguing without Josephine’s reasoned interventions, but I asked her to remain in Antiva, for now. Solas will expect us to regroup, to lean on each other. It’s how we survived Corypheus, and how I survived his leaving, after.

When I returned to the eluvian tonight, Merrill was there, studying the shimmering surface, knees drawn up to her chest. She had activated it, then.

“I expected it to be beautiful,” she said when she noticed me. “But it is radiant.”

There was a longing in her voice that I recognized, and I sat down beside her, joining her in considering the mirror’s temptations.

“I saw so many of them shattered at the Darvaarad. I couldn’t understand how the Qunari could be so fearful that they would destroy something so ancient, so rare,” I admitted. It had been a fleeting thought in the midst of that battle, that there were so few wonders left of Arlathan, and fewer still now because of the ignorance of the Qunari.

“Fear can make people do many ugly things.” Merrill’s voice was quiet. “Though I expect you know that already.”

I shot her a look. Was she speaking of the Inquisition? Or something else?

“If it didn’t, I suppose I’d be out of a job,” I mused, “in more than name only.”

She laughed then, sharp and bright, and I could see how Varric had once thought to dub her Daisy.

\--

The Crossroads seem unchanged, though if the Dread Wolf’s people are using them, they’d be careful to leave no traces. And they cannot have much cause to use this part of the network, with so few active eluvians attached to it.

Still, I was cautious when I passed through to the sanctuary, half-expecting to emerge somewhere else, or nowhere at all. But then it was before me, the ancient stone bathed in moonlight, the distant mountains ringed with snow.

I went immediately into the depths of the main sanctuary, where I had seen Solas in the Fade. I examined every corner, every outcropping, every edged stone in the floor. I don’t know what I was looking for. I think I hoped for some secret from the past – or from something more recent, something left for me. I felt the swinging weight of the jaw bone every time I bent over, the thump of it falling again to my chest when I rose like the feel of his palm searching for my pulse after a battle, cupping my breast in our shared tent at night, leaving me aching before him when he left me again after taking my hand.

“The Dread Wolf cautions you against visiting this sanctuary again. Old enemies know of it and may make use of it.”

I leapt back, startled – it was the hunter who had welcomed me into Clan Sabrae’s camp. The only one who had welcomed me. He stood in the doorway in traveling clothes, fine Dalish leathers suitable for far colder climes than the lands surrounding Kirkwall.

“How did you get here?”

I didn't ask him to explain his warning - though I wish that I had, as I am left wondering if old enemies means old gods. In the moment, I wanted only to run to the hunter and beat my sole fist against his chest for being a messenger, and not the one who crafted the message. When he didn't answer me, I took a step forward.

“Does Feynriel know you serve another master?”

The hunter smiled. It was wise and shrewd and reminded me of Duchess Florianne – the smile of someone who thinks they know more than you do.

“Feynriel is a caretaker, not a master. He tends to sheep even as the wolves circle him.”

“And what of the sheep who think that by wearing the wolf’s scent, howling in his tongue, they will be spared when he hungers?”

The hunter’s smile only broadened.

“He did say you were clever. I can see why he is taken with you.”

He said no more but cast a trio of Fire wards on the floor, blocking my way out, before disappearing back up the stairs. I would have to wait for them to dissipate. I had always relied upon Solas to dispel any hostile magics – my own inclination leaning more towards being the one dealing damage, rather than tending to those who suffered it. I wasn’t sure I would have chased after the hunter anyway. It wasn’t as though he would lead me to Solas.

I will find him again in the Fade.

Unless he finds me first.


	11. Cyphers & Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before leaving Kirkwall for Minrathous, Lavellan is gifted a journal that belonged to Solas during his time in Skyhold. The contents are surprising and sweet and sad.
> 
> Also, Dorian and Lavellan tease Cullen because obviously.

All day I have waited for night to fall and to rest my horse and my mind - but not my heart. Leliana had a gift for me before we departed Kirkwall.

“One of my agents found this among an assortment of books that we presumed came from the Skyhold archives,” she said, handing me a cloth-wrapped package. Inside was a slim tome, the leather cover absent any identifying markings. I’d opened to the first page and nearly dropped it: it was in Solas’ hand.

Leliana seemed pleased by my response.

“You recall he had no personal effects that we could identify after he left Skyhold. This one was hidden - he either forgot about it, or did not have time to recover it.”

“Did you read it?”

Leliana’s smile broadened.

“Only enough to learn the cypher. The contents are personal,” she replied, eyes shining. Leliana indicated a loose page tucked between two others: the work she’d done to decode it. “I thought that you should be the one to read it. If there is anything I need to know, I assume you will tell me.”

It felt like I were holding my own weight in gold, or the hand he’d taken from me, or his heart. I had seen him sketching, had observed him taking notes, but everything was gone after we defeated Corypheus and he disappeared. That something should have surfaced after so long felt like a dream. Perhaps he’d had this planted only recently and meant to mislead me. Or perhaps it was as Leliana had said, and he had merely forgotten it, or one of his agents had.

I want to devour it all at once, but I am also wary of missing something at the end of these hard days of travel. And the cypher is complex. I must take it, I think, a day and a page at a time.

\--

_She moves with all the grace of a child of the stone. It is her words she wields with subtlety._

He does not only write of me. But he does write of me.

\--

It isn’t possible to date his writings, which surprises me, as I would’ve expected greater order from him. But perhaps there is another cypher here, in how and when he chooses to record his thoughts. Maybe there are pages missing.

Solas’ reflections are mostly of encounters in the Fade, interpretations of what he dreamed or witnessed - would he make the distinction? The tone is often sorrowful, though I do at times see the wonder and the joy he shared with me, when he told me some of these same stories.

When we walked together, in some of these same places.

Dorian, weary of the banter of his servants, looks to me for entertainment.

“Does he mention your bosom? Please tell me there are salacious details or I will die of boredom.”

“We will mourn you excessively,” I replied, tucking Solas’ journal away when Dorian caught me reading by the fire. We are camped in the Silent Plains. I wonder that I ever found the Exalted Plains desolate, after seeing this place.

“Oh, please. Hire a professional. I’ve seen you cry. It’s not pretty.”

“There are professional mourners in Tevinter?” Cullen looked up from where he drafted a missive, expression dubious.

“Of course,” Dorian purred, his next words insinuating just what he intended, if the commander’s blush was any indication. “There are professionals of all kinds in Tevinter.”

Cullen looked away but I saw his smile, quick and partly screened by his furs. Perhaps that’s why he wears them. Steadfastly ignoring Dorian, he looked to me, nodding toward the journal.

“I don’t suppose you’ve learned anything we don’t know already?”

“About what Solas might do next? Or about my bosom?”

Dorian’s laugh was a joy, and I couldn’t help but join him. Cullen only shook his head, red from his neck to his ears, and turned his back on both of us.

\--

_She was no hunter of her clan and yet she pins me with a glance. Once I lived at no one’s mercy. Now I am at hers. In the night when skin-to-skin she stirs me, in the day when the sun’s blush fails to rival her bold blaze in battle._

It occurs to me that Solas could have written this in elvhen and yet, he did not. No Dalish has his mastery of the tongue, and certainly I do not. Did he hope that I would read it?

\--

It is our last night on the Silent Plains and I cannot decide if I am grateful that my dreams have been vague and uninspiring, or worried.

Mostly I think that I am disappointed. There is a Dalish legend of Fen’Harel and a clan he terrorized who once roamed these lands, and I had hoped to find some reflection of him in the Fade. Perhaps it is only a story, as it seems so many of our tales about the Dread Wolf were.

Though the notion of Solas metaphorically biting off his own tail appeals to me greatly.

Dorian allowed me the use of his sending crystal to speak with Bull, and I was grateful for the distraction.

“Got a surprise for you, Boss. Dalish heard a rumor about some shady shit north of Antiva, in the Arlathan Forest. Right up your alley.”

“In the Arlathan Forest?” I’d suppressed my own desire to look there, if not for Solas, than for some intelligence I could use. Bull’s grin was wicked.

“I thought you’d like that.”

“Just be careful, Bull,” I said. “The Inquisition’s coffers aren’t what they used to be.”

“Don’t tell the boys, but,” he lowered his voice, “I’d work for you for free.”

He’s promised to use trusted contacts to reach us in Minrathous, if they find anything in the forest. Hopefully Dalish knows what she’s looking for.

And Solas will have left something worth finding.

\--

 _The Dread Wolf does not deal in truths but she has earned my honesty. (And I am not the Dread Wolf, only.) What if I lack the will to give it? What if she cannot forgive me? What if she_ **_can_** _?_

_I walk the dinan’shiral._

_I have no heart to give._

_(What I do not give she takes.)_

_Forgive me, vhenan._

\--

I do, I do, I do, my love.

(If you will only stop this madness.)

 


	12. Hidden in Plain Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Solas will expect you to rely on your legacy as the Inquisitor, your allies, as we’ve believed,” she offered. “He won’t expect you to disappear. He won’t expect you to hide in plain sight.”
> 
> “Just as he did,” I whispered, thinking of the pilgrim I had met, the quiet apostate whose eyes concealed everything, whose heart threatened to burn up the world.
> 
> “Just as he did,” Leliana echoed.
> 
> \--
> 
> Open revolt in Tevinter changes Lavellan's plans, and what the future holds.
> 
> \--
> 
> This is the final chapter, all. Now that #TheDreadWolfRises teaser dropped last night and we're seeing some real direction with DA4, I'm letting this piece lie. I haven't the skill for fan theories and speculation and am far more comfortable filling in the grey spaces in an existing narrative. I love to play in canon; I'm happiest there and it's kind of why I love fic, to read between the lines rather than write my own. 
> 
> Look for me in drabbles and prompts as we all wait, slavering like wolves, for more news.

Word from Cassandra today. Nothing of note beyond her scorning of Varric’s aide in improving her letter writing, which suggests that the two are in correspondence. I won’t tell Dorian. His suspicions are likely to be right on the nose and he’ll be unable to keep them to himself.

It’s enough for me to think that perhaps there is some happiness to be had by others that I love, even if they can’t admit it yet.

Another sea voyage awaits us for all I prefer the shore.

When we recruited Bull on the Storm Coast I recall slipping out of my boots – I was looking for any reason to go bare foot, then, still new to the Inquisition, to being the Herald, to being bound to anything but myself and my clan.

We were camped beside the sea. I had padded silently away from my tent to the surf and was kicking happily away, I assumed, unobserved.

“Once I knew a spirit who reveled as you do in the dreams of those who dwelled near the sea.”

Solas sat watching, nearly invisible under the new moon. His eyes were black and deep as the distant depths, and I had ceased immediately my childish play at the water’s edge.

“Are there no waters in the Fade?”

“Not like these,” Solas replied. I noticed that his feet were unbound, his toes buried in the sand, heels pearled with small, polished stones. I laughed out loud at the realization that perhaps it had been me who had interrupted _him_.

“Don’t let me keep you,” I teased, gesturing towards his feet. What I’d felt then had been a live ember, fragile but fed by every glance we shared in Haven or on the road.

“No,” Solas said, voice low and light, a musical tug. “Do not let me keep _you_.”

If I spend the journey in my bunk the others will assume that I am sick and not that I am begging for dreams of him and waking with only my own hands on my own body, empty.

\--

“There’s been a change of plans.”

I heard more fear in Leliana’s voice this afternoon than I ever have before, restrained but plain as blood writing.

“Care to elaborate?”

Dorian’s voice betrayed his irritation. We had not made landfall in Minrathous, as he’d wished, but rather in what passed for a Tevinter back water: a small but opulent village on the coast, several days ride from the capitol. We met with Leliana in the back room of a tavern. We could have been in Ferelden or Orlais: the beer was the same, the drunken behaviors, the gossip.

“It’s only a matter of time before the Magisterium can no longer silence the slave rebellion,” she announced, looking away, into the fire. There were no windows in the room and I had the sense she wanted to look beyond the space we currently occupied. For an escape or for perspective I couldn’t say.

“The _what_?”

Dorian’s shock was accompanied by a brief static charge in his hands. Leliana turned then towards both of us, face set.

“I’ve lost three agents in the last month to their purges,” she hissed. “Based on what intelligence I have been able to reliably secure, the magisters are only delaying the inevitable. Slaves outnumber free mages three to one. An open revolt will cripple the nation, and I anticipate it any moment.”

“But how?” Dorian was despondent. I could see his hopes for Tevinter unraveling, his dream of a better Magisterium eclipsed by the urgency of war.

I didn’t need Leliana’s response to answer Dorian’s desperate question for how this could have happened, so suddenly and so soon after years of rigid control.

“Solas,” I murmured. “He’s led a rebellion before against impossible odds – the magisters are laughable, compared with the Evanuris.”

Leliana nodded.

“I anticipated his influence here, but I did not expect he would mobilize them so quickly,” she admitted.

“And this means what for us? We turn tail and slink back to Kirkwall?” Dorian barely disguised his hurt, for all his bluster. I am sorry for his grief, but I cannot help but rejoice at any yoke thrown off – I might once have considered the elven slaves of Tevinter flat-ears, but I know now what we once shared, what was taken from us by time and lies and those who sought to divide us for their own gain.

“No,” Leliana insisted, looking at me. Her eyes were clear, but sad. “The Inquisitor will pose as an escaped slave and infiltrate the rebellion.”

I think it was a full minute before I was able to respond.

“To what end, Leliana? I’m not a spy.”

“No, but you are a Dreamer. You were the Herald, the Inquisitor. You have known and seen things and _will_ know and see things the rest of us cannot.” There was a fervor in her words that reminded me of her prayers, her lamentations after the death of the Divine. “You’ve grown close to Solas before. You can do it again.”

We’d argued, the three of us, for hours in whispers. What I couldn’t do, what we couldn’t expect, what it would mean if I failed. But there is nothing else to be done. If we go to Minrathous as we are, we will be visible in a way that we can’t afford. Dorian will be painted with the same brush as his peers, no matter his deeds. He will be dead and we will be powerless.

In the end, Leliana’s most convincing argument was her simplest.

“Solas will expect you to rely on your legacy as the Inquisitor, your allies, as we’ve believed,” she offered. “He won’t expect you to disappear. He won’t expect you to hide in plain sight.”

“Just as he did,” I whispered, thinking of the pilgrim I had met, the quiet apostate whose eyes concealed everything, whose heart threatened to burn up the world.

“Just as he did,” Leliana echoed. I understood then the sadness I’d seen in her eyes, that she knew what she was asking me to do.

“What about this?” I gestured to my ruined arm. “What use is a slave with only one arm? And what if someone makes the connection?”

“There are more maimed slaves in Tevinter than you’d expect.” Leliana’s voice was cold. “And I have something that may help.” From the same chest she’d shared her few reports with us she lifted a cloth bundle. “Dagna spent a considerable amount of time studying with Magister Tebrin and assured me this will pass for Tevinter-make.”

Nestled in the cloth was a wonder of artifice and magic. I am wearing it now, the lyrium-infused fingers curling reflexively with each stroke of the quill. Leliana explained that it is not unheard of for favored slaves, or those with a particular gift for magic, to be altered as suits their master’s fancy. I crushed a stone in my palm this evening as easily as a crust of dry bread, and I can feel my own power feeding into its hidden workings – pooling and potent.

I can’t decide if I am horrified or thrilled.

“You will leave here in two days time,” Leliana explained, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me what she plans for herself and Dorian. It is probably for the best. I can’t give up intelligence I don’t have.

“Where am I going?”

“I only have a name for you, and the rumored site of the rebellion’s next move,” she pointed to a spot on a map, meeting my eyes. “You will want to find Fenris.”

\--

There is a passage in Solas’ journal that I have committed to memory.

_There was a time when I thought my own eyes the only lens for truth. I could be blinded and still see my path as just._

_She reaches for my hand and there are two paths._

_There have always been two paths._

I must leave his journal and my own in Leliana’s care. Slaves do not read, and they do not write, and it is my penchant for both that she feels will give me away more than the loss of my hand. I know she’s right, but I feel like I’m losing a limb again, even as I practice with the one that Dagna has made me.

Leliana believes that I will be able to do what none of her agents has successfully done, to win a true place in the rebellion’s hierarchy, and she’s right about that, too. None of her agents believe that Fen’Harel is right.

But I do.

Tonight as I tried and failed to sleep I held the jawbone in my hands, warm in the one I was born with, buzzing and cool in the other. I remember the sharp bite of it through my clothes the first time he kissed me in the Fade, pressed between us over my heart. I remember how he teased me in my bed in Skyhold, curling it around my bare breast, the teeth dulled, the kisses that followed sucking, sweet. It is not a trophy, not a gift, but a promise.

Var lath vir suledin, ma vhenan.

I have caught your scent, this time.


End file.
